Hmmm, I thought the postings about delusional parasitoses were
finished, but I was mistaken.
On Thu, 09 Apr 1998 20:23:40 -0700, Edward Johnson <cgi at wt.net> wrote:
>I missed out on the lab work.... but...
>>I remember having terrible health problems since somewhere back
>around the third or fourth grade of grade school. Lack of energy,
>awful skin irritations and itching, sneezing, fits of anger that would
>turn on and off like a light switch, sometimes I would say and do things
>for which there was not any reasonable explanation for.
>>The doctors said it was allergies and hyperactivity.
>>By the seventh grade my skin was flaking off of me like scales from
>a fish. The other children called me fish face.
>>By age thirty I found myself diagnosed with some sort of psychiatric
>disorder. Something about bipolar. You know, mood swings.
>Up/down/up/down. I definitely had the mood swings.
>One minute I was so damned happy that dancing on the dinner table
>would sound like a good thing to do.
>>My body would shake so bad that I remember having difficulty carrying
>a plate of food from the buffet. I love those oriental buffets.
>>I also would stay awake as long as 72 hours regularly before sleeping.
>(Never,ever did I sleep every night like most people do)
>At a minimum I would sleep every other night.
>>So the doctors said that I was bipolar.
>>yeah. right.
>>In the middle of the summer 1992, in Houston texas, I got dressed in a
>pair of jeans, a heavy shirt, and a jacket that surely was more that
>enough for freezing weather, I got into my cadillac and went to one of
>the outdoor sports bars down on richmond to have a few beers. Only when
>I got there I was freezing cold and I noticed that most of the other
>people were wearing shorts and maybe a t-shirt.
>My body was always cold.
>>The doctors all said that there was absolutely no cure for
>my condition and that all they could do was try to medicate me.
>>In the fall of 1993 I gave up on traditional medicine.
>I am sure that I made plenty of mistakes but I do know that
>today I do not suffer from many of the above symptoms, I sleep
>regularly every night(without any medication).
>This is what I did:
>>You see, somebody suggested that I try a trip to the health food store.
>I came home with some vegetables, a juicer, and some vitamins.
>the total was just under $1,000.00
>225 for the juicer.
>700+/- for the vitamins.
>>Mostly this was a waste of time.
>Dont get me wrong, juicing is very good and vitamins can be very
>helpful. But for me this was like putting the pony in front of the
>cart.
>>A couple months after I started the vitamins, I was sitting at the juice
>bar at whole foods on shepherd drinking probably 20-30 dollars worth of
>juice. How about that wheatgrass- tastes like crap, but they say its
>good for me? Some of the other juices were quite tasty though. I
>especially like a mix of 2/3 apple and 1/3 celery. yummy.
>>So here I am at one of houstons more cool spots to get a mug of juice
>and I am still sick as a dog. I still have terrible itching for which
>I get regular steroid injections which I suspect the side effects will
>be worse for me in the long run than to just tolerate the itching. time
>will tell. (kenalog)
>>A quite nice young girl with tattoos working behind the counter looks at
>me and says...you know, if you really want to get better why not check
>out this book? and she wrote down this book title for me...
>> cleanse and purify thyself
>>I drove around for a couple weeks with this note tucked into my
>car's ashtray. Finally though I went to buy this book and it
>made a drastic change in my life. This book talked about internal
>cleansing from what I call the in-pipe to the out-pipe.
>I went for colonics which are professionally administered enemas.
>>Out of my body since that day in the fall of 1993 I have extracted these
>nasty looking parasites. some are small(only a inch or so in length),
>some are up to a foot long or more. I have taken trips to mexico
>to try to get medicine to rid my body of the creatures.
>>It is a little late to try to make a long story short, but,,,
>>Here is the punch line:
>>Today i regularly remove parasites from my body.
> (i can show them to you if you like.)
>I have tried mebendazole to rid my body of these parasites.
>I have tried massive doses of antibiotics. (5-10,000 mg)
>I now have a prescription for stromectol, but cant seem to
>locate a pharmacy that stocks this item.
>>I have been turned away by doctors who say:
> a) you do not have insurance.
> b) people do not get parasites in this country.
> c) have you seen a psychiatrist?
> (yes i have, but i still have parasites)
>>>I would like to get rid of this parsite problem completely.
>>I have been trying for almost five years now to take care of this
>problem. If you know of a solution please share it with me now.
>>Thanks in advance for you help.
>>Edward Johnson
>713-928-5357
>call anytime.
>:)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Aaron Thomas Adamack wrote:
>>>> Christopher Blanar & Mylene Levesque (blanlev at CAM.ORG) wrote:
>> : I am looking for videos for a university-level parasitology course. If
>> : anyone has any ideas they would be greatly appreciated.
>>>> : I am also interested in how various professors run their lab sessions,
>> : what is taught, what dissections performed, innovative ideas, evaluation
>> : methods... what works, what doesn't, etc.
>>>> Hi, I'm not actually a lab instructor or a prof, but I have recently
>> completed a parasitology course with a lab and lecture components. The
>> lab consisted of looking at slides of various parasites working from
>> protazoa up to arthropod parasites. We had occasional dissections done
>> for us, consisting of cutting open a termite to see its intestinal
>> parasites, and I think we had a snail cut open but that was about all for
>> dissections. We also had living or fairly close to living ie. was on the
>> verge of dying sticklebacks which had ectoparasites living on them.
>> Evaluation for the lab was something like 65% lab exam, 30% lab book and
>> 5% for enthusiasm for the course ie. showing up for the labs and taking
>> an interest. The lab book was simply drawings of the various parasites we
>> looked at on the slide and some comments made on the importance or what
>> was special about the parasite or its group. The lab exam was look at the
>> slide tell us what it is and then a second question for the slide was
>> what disease does the parasite cause, what symptoms does it cause, or in
>> one case should we worry about having this parasite or is it harmless.
>> Additional questions included what stage is the parasite in and what is
>> its host.
>>>> I would suggest avoiding the look at the slide and draw it option as it
>> is incredibly boring and as our prof admitted 95% of what we saw would be
>> forgotten within half an hour of the test. Furthermore, what we
>> remembered was quite limited as the tests appear to have been quite
>> heavily scaled as lab marks were generally much higher than the students
>> expected.
>>>> I personally would have preferred doing something where we look at one
>> sample from each major grouping to get the idea of hey this is what X
>> looks like. Then from there go out into the local area and see if you can
>> map out the life cycle of some local parasite. For example find some
>> snail discover it has a parasite in it. Figure out who gets the next
>> stage and try and find the parasite in the next host. I was supposed to
>> do something like that in my Ecological Parasitology course but
>> unfortunatly the class was short on students and so funding for a lab
>> instructor was not provided and we did not get to do the project and are
>> instead writing a review paper.
>> -Aaron
Dr. Peter W. Pappas
Professor/Chairperson
Department of Zoology
The Ohio State University
Columbus, OH 43210
pappas.3 at osu.edu